Sophomore

My older daughter, Emma. just left for her sophomore year at VCU. She has an apartment this year and couldn't wait to leave, which is understandable, but I was in no hurry. Of course, I thought the summer flew by too. I always swore I wouldn't do a my-kids-are-so-cute blogposts. But she's 150 miles away, so why not?

Here are some drawings Emma inspired over the years.



She was an inspiration even before she was born. Let's see the rest of that Why Things Are illustration-

Eew is right. Here's a rough for an old Almanac-

And the final, which is in the collection of my dad-

And, to complete her embarrassment, the digital debut of an Almanac she did write, in 2002, Picnic-

(The part I like best are Emma's hands; they fidget just right.) The original hangs in our hall, festooned with a multicolored county fair ribbon that says Grand Champion (poetry, 10 and under),
 which came with a check for $15, a lot of money for a five-year-old. Emma, at about the same age, would take small rocks from the back yard and draw smiling faces on them. Then she'd release them into the wild to be found by future, puzzled generations. This sparked a sequence in CdS where Alice did the same thing; one of the few times the strip was so beholden to reality. That's Emma's sister, Charlotte, singing back-up. She's the tallest one in the family and she knows archery and lives at home. If you think I'm going to do any blogposts about what she does, you're crazy.